Mouth/ Muzzle/ Maw
I wish I could leporine/ I wish I could be fanged/ I wish my eyes were glazed glass eyes/ I wish I could be roadkill. I wish I had pastern or fetlock/ or a third leg. I suppose I could be roadkill/ I too have small intestine/ ready and willing to be strung like crepe-paper/ but there’d be no dignity to it/ my naked woman’s body a shameful comparison to the raccoon. I wish I could know/ for certain/ that I wouldn’t have let you make me roadkill/ dump me underneath some guardrail/ I wish I could be bovine. I wish I could be tanned/ stretched. I wish my gristle could be the gristle left behind on the fork/ gulped down the drain/ and reunited with the sewage. Maybe I’m foolish/ in thinking you would’ve taken an udder with less force than this breast/ perhaps I am being simplistic now/ idealistic now/ but I wish I had nose leather. I wish magnolia stayed alive/ and I wish cloved garlic worked to banish yeast infection. I wish the insides of my ears were tufted/ and my knees weren’t so torpored/ if my hide were a rug/ it would be a bad rug/ no cushion at all for the sole. I wish I didn’t always drink water so wantingly/ twin palms raised/ and swallowing my own echo. I wish my nails were more keratin/ less calcium/ I wish I could be vermin. If I were taxidermied/ I’d hope they’d keep me behind glass/ fill my diorama with little snips and scraps/ one sock/ mint tin of sleepers/ palmful of blackberry or carrot/ a book called ulna. If I were stuffed I’d hope they’d still let me vomit. I wish I could be a shot war horse. I wish I could be a stole/ my cremish skin and fine hair asphyxiated around some motherly neck/ I wish I had better intuition. I wish you wouldn’t have asked me/ what’s the worst thing anyone’s ever done to you/ after you did it. I wish I could be serpentine/ crustacean/ I wish I could be crushed. I too have coagulation/ ready to splatter. Capillaries/ willing to burst.
Self-Inquiry for Late Nights
Are you your mother’s little whore daughter? Are you your sister’s baby sister? Did you really think
you would outrun them? Do you look pretty in red?
There’s still time to plant daylilies, isn’t there? What about hydrangea? Chamomile? Is there still time
to plant witch hazel?
Is there anything you will not take? Will you take it raw? Muffled? Will you take it face-down? Will
you
wipe that warm, unnerving splatter from your own back as best you can?
Don’t you remember the story of Daphne? Of Joan d’Arc? Ophelia? Susannah? Of the Weaving
Girl?
Marguerite? Of Esther? Jane? Pavarna? Of Desdemona? Of the Sky Woman? Macha? Ruth? Of
Deirdrê? Naoise? Ariadne? L’Inconnue de la Seine? Of Leda? Penelope? Of Anne? Yehenara?
Cassandra? Of Eve? Eve? Do you see how simple it would be, to mythologize this?
One laundromat has cheaper washers, but is it the one across from the delicatessen or the one at the
end of the block? And can you really get that stain out of his white shirt?
Did you remember to buy flour from the market?
Do you look pretty in black and blue?
From Emma DeNaples: I was born in the city of New Haven, Connecticut, near midnight on October 22nd, 2000. I don't know exactly why I write, but I do know that I have to, and that I want to. Capturing the landscape of my inner world has always been a great need of mine; growing up with two combative teenaged parents, dad a commi-athiest from the city and mom freshly rebelled from her family farm in Massachusetts, my sister and I were raised in a strange, amalgamatic environment. My childhood was rife both with the beauty of nature (how often I made whole meals from the flora of the woods by our house, how young I learned to stay afloat in white water) and the muck of hardship. That upbringing has followed me into adulthood and influenced all of my relationships; as a queer young woman with very little in her bank account, stability continues to evade me, and I sometimes find myself repeating the patterns that shaped my early life. Capturing any of this in a poem can feel futile, but I still want to try.